Against All Odds. Jorma Ollila

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СКАЧАТЬ My sister Leena was born two years later, but I didn’t have to compete with her because she was a girl. I was very much my mother’s boy, from the beginning and right up until her death.

      As the eldest I naturally had responsibilities as well as privileges. I not only had to look after myself, but my younger siblings, too. My parents didn’t always have much time to spare for me, and it was assumed I could look after myself. I had family responsibilities: I had to organize the other children to do their chores, and it was assumed I would speak up for them with our parents. And I was expected to set a good example.

      Our mother exuded a quiet charisma, which I have come to appreciate more and more over the years. She always made me do my best and expected good results, though these demands were never spoken. I understood them perfectly well from her demeanor and solicitude. I realized I was expected to do well, and I tried to live up to those expectations. My mother accomplished that. She supported me in my studies; she respected knowledge and education, and she had her own reasons for that.

      My mother’s family was from Isokyrö, not far from my father’s family home. Generation after generation had lived in the area. So my entire clan, as far back as the sixteenth century, was of Ostrobothnian farming stock. My mother grew up in modest surroundings with seven brothers and sisters. Her father was Isak Isakinpoika Kallio, a fantastically obstinate farmer who hated the gentry and all its works. He had decided that none of his children should go to secondary school because they would be exposed to bad influences there. My mother was the second youngest child, and her father died before she reached school age. So my mother did after all have the chance of an education. She became the first of her family to graduate from high school. She would certainly have graduated from university had she not met my father and started a family with him.

      My father was tall, lean, and hard-working. He was a little unusual because he talked a lot – except about the war, on which he was silent. He was a war hero who had received medals for his part in the battle of Taipale. He had served as a field artillery officer but he never talked much about that time, and certainly never boasted. It wasn’t until his grandson – my son – came along that he opened up about his experience of war. For decades after the war it was simply not the done thing to talk about it. And it was not in my father’s nature to do so: he had done his duty on the Front, and there was no need to go on about it.

      My father worked non-stop, planning and building. He always had many irons in the fire. Through him I became interested in a thousand different things, which caused problems in later life when I had to focus on just one thing at a time. Where we lived men had the right to take an interest in whatever took their fancy, while women were expected to clear up after them. My mother did all the housework, as was usual in Finland in the fifties. When I was born, my mother was twenty-four and my father twenty-eight years old. We all lived at my grandfather’s house in Kurikka, where the growing family had to squeeze into two rooms. We shared the ground floor with some other relatives while my grandfather lived upstairs. My father began work in the family electrical business, which my grandfather must have expected him to take over eventually.

      There was a real sense of purpose. My home background taught me that one must work, and work hard, if one intends to succeed in life. My grandfather worked very hard in his business, and my father worked seven days a week. My mother toiled at home looking after our growing family, and she taught in the village school as well. As well as his paid work, my father devoted a lot of time to his own projects. He designed the electrical wiring for other people’s houses, and built houses and summer cottages. There was enough work to fill every waking moment, and every waking moment was filled with it.

      Working was as natural as breathing. Leaving work undone or enjoying moments of creative leisure was considered unnatural. That was laziness, the start of a slippery slope. It might lead to vodka-drinking, which was one of the deadliest sins (village brawls and domestic violence were common to Ostrobothnian life). People were judged by their ability to work. “A good worker” was the finest compliment you could pay someone. Working well was linked to another value: autonomy. People should stand on their own two feet and make their own way in life.

       Sitting on my father’s lap with my sister Leena in Kurikka 1954.

      The people I grew up with thought you could never do too much work, while leisure time was a potentially fatal menace. It was just this mindset that enabled Finland to become a developed country. There are parallels with the developing economies of Southeast Asia. I see there a mindset familiar from my childhood: work enables one to get on in life, to achieve prosperity, and to educate one’s children for a better life. I learned this from my parents. And when life is full of things to be done, at least it isn’t dull.

      My mother believed in God. Some of her family were Pietists who wore black and sang psalms. I remember as a boy in short trousers taking part in Pietist meetings. God wasn’t really mentioned at home, though. We went to church at Christmas, for christenings, and for funerals. My parents were more interested in natural history than in religion. There were many books about geography and natural history on our shelves, and we had encyclopedias and maps and illustrated books of natural wonders, but the family only began to read novels in the 1960s. We read the literary classics, but science books were regarded as a better use of time.

      Arithmetic and math were part of everyday life, and our family regarded them as positively virtuous. My parents always assumed their children would have no difficulties with math. They didn’t even bother to look at the grades we got for math, for they knew they would always be the top scores. My grandfather’s skill with figures had been passed down to my father and then to me and my siblings. And my mother was also known for her mathematical ability. I was keen on mathematics from a very early age, and I demanded high standards of accuracy from myself. Later I demanded them from others. “Surely you know your own numbers,” I would say to subordinates who got their figures mixed up when reporting results.

      Numbers revealed a much wider world. Numbers meant things, and things could be very important, indeed. If I understood the numbers, I would understand things as well. If I understood things, I could control the world. When the numbers were clear, I could concentrate on the reality they represented. Then I could achieve something new. All this became clear to me much later, but without the respect my father and mother showed for mathematics I would not be the person I am now.

      We lived in that small apartment in my grandfather’s house until I was four. Then we moved to a bigger space, a flat above a bank in the center of Kurikka. That’s where my childhood memories begin. We rented our new home, where we children had our own rooms – there was quite enough space in this old stone apartment block. From home it was a short trip to the shops and schools. This was the first of many moves – I lived in at least seven places before I was seventeen years old.

      My own world. That’s what I had as a four-year-old in Kurikka. It comprised our new home above the bank, my parents and siblings, and lots of interesting things in the buildings around. Next to the bank building there were wooden buildings in a regular pattern. In our part of the world houses were built in orderly rows. Everything had to be properly organized.

      Summer was of course the nicest time. I rode my bike and swam in the river, since there weren’t really any lakes where we lived. I also did my bit to feed the family, catching little perch and carp from the river and looking after grandma’s cows and sheep. My mother made wonderful sandwiches and buns and the hot chocolate was the best ever.

      My mother and father didn’t have much time to spare for playing with me, so I could explore in peace. One of the most interesting places was a store a few hundred yards from home. Agricultural machinery was kept there: machines for threshing corn, for shredding straw, for ploughing fields, and for mowing meadows. They were all brand-new, positively СКАЧАТЬ